


you say you're honest, but love is for thieves

by eloboosting, markerlimes (sunmi)



Series: bilgewater au [1]
Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Heist gone wrong, M/M, Miscommunication, On the Run, Partner Betrayal, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-29 06:25:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6363088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloboosting/pseuds/eloboosting, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunmi/pseuds/markerlimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5 things the prince of thieves stole, and the one Inkyu couldn’t </p><p>(burning tides au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you say you're honest, but love is for thieves

**Author's Note:**

> also known as eloboosting and me tilting off the face of the planet with how much mata/dandy hurt and feel so right all the same. 
> 
> this started off as a play off of dandy's nickname "prince of thieves" and somehow it spiraled into an au where dandy is the sauve twisted fate to mata's stubborn and explosive graves. blame riot for making the bilgewater event super gay. 
> 
> note: this may be confusing if you're not familiar with the burning tides bilgewater event or the lore behind twisted fate + graves but it's [definitely worth the read if you have time ;; ](http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/site/bilgewater/)

 

5.

 

Inkyu isn’t really into intangibles.

Growing up on the streets, problems like filling his stomach and sleeping somewhere reliably warm are more pressing than abstract concepts like morality or ethics. You pick up things quickly when you’re young and before he turns ten, Inkyu learns to steal. He learns to steal to stave off his hunger and earn a pretty coin by being fast. He learns that smiling to strangers makes them less wary, less inclined to check their pockets the moment he cuts their purses and disappears into the crowd.

The first purse he cuts is from a young mother, a tired looking woman who is too busy corralling her kids to notice Inkyu brush against her. He feigns a small side-step and dips his hand into her pocket. It’s an easy steal, almost laughably so, and it leaves Inkyu wondering why he ever settled for being hungry instead.

Eventually the thrill fades and the guilt sinks in, but it’s about as heavy as the paltry sum of coins in his hand. No one in this area has much of anything and it’s almost laughable how much it weighs on his heart that he’s stolen from someone maybe worse off than himself. Regardless, he buys bread on the way back home and wonders if it would have been easier to simply just steal it from the bakery.

He learns the same year, the cost of getting caught. It comes with the lesson of the taste of blood flooding his mouth and what it really feels like to be helpless, trapped and unable to fight back.

Being cornered is by far the worst and even though Inkyu knows the neighborhood like the back of his hand, it’s difficult to avoid the small, winding alleys that twists themselves into dead-ends. He learns the hard way of what happens when the street gangs are around, but those are the mistakes he never makes twice.

He learns that magic is real too.

Somewhere tucked in palaces of Demacia or the ancient deserts of Shurima, magic is very much a real thing.

There’s always tales about magic that could make food appear out of thin air or gold shine from the dirt, but Inkyu, as entranced as he is, isn’t a fool. He knows magic like that is for royalty and heros, not street rats like him but perhaps that _fake_ magic can get you just as far out here in the streets.  A sleight of the hand, a false cut at the poker table, all the fake magic in the world in his hands to do his bidding. What he doesn’t earn through his magic tricks, he steals—so in the end, it is what it is, a dirty job.

Surviving is easy. Surviving with morality is a different story, but one that Inkyu never bothered with. If it comes down to having food in his stomach or not, it’s an obvious choice.

Because once again, he’s all about the tangibles.

It takes him a total of seven years, four of petty thievery and three of more risky crimes, before he meets someone with a similar set of ideals and that’s when the real magic begins.

 

 

4.

 

Cho Sehyung is eighteen, kills men for a living—judging from the size of his gun—and is the only man in all of Bilgewater unaware of Inkyu’s reputation as a card sharp among many other things.

Either that or he’s foolish enough to sit across from Inkyu at the poker table and up the ante as a bluff. Inkyu likes to stall, leave some hope and hesitation in the air before he twists the odds to his favor.

“Are you gonna fold or not?”

Inkyu’s always got an ace up his sleeve, several in fact. And this time’s no different, as he expertly switches out his cards. Sehyung’s face is blank, void of all tells that Inkyu normally likes to pick apart. He finds this altogether much more fascinating.

“I’ve got time,” Inkyu replies, cocky. “What’s the hurry?”

“No hurry,” Sehyung says, feigning a bored look. “I’ve just got better things to do than stare at your pretty face all day.”

“Do you really?” Inkyu shoots back and if it’s Sehyung’s intention to fluster him, two can play at that game.

He leans in, smiling and Sehyung stares back unflinchingly. They lock gazes and Inkyu can easily read the suspicion in his eyes. There’s a smile on his lips, but his eyes are steely like he’s Seen Some Shit and in these parts of Bilgewater, Inkyu can’t say he’s surprised.

It takes him a second for Inkyu to realize he’s holding his breath. There’s an electric current of anticipation in the air between them and Inkyu can’t quite remember the last time he was _this_ excited to swindle anyone.

Petty crime gets boring after a while, and sometimes he reaches for the riskier jobs for his high. But somehow _this_ , a random card game he found himself playing out of boredom, is enough to satisfy the adrenaline in his veins.

“All in,” he says with a bright smile, shoving his chips into the center of the table. An ace slides up from his sleeve into his hand, the only magic he’s ever needed to win. “I’m feeling lucky.”

Sehyung raises an eyebrow, but pushes his chips in with a shrug. “It’s your money to lose.”

He watches as the cards fall onto the table and lets out a sharp bark of laughter.

They each have four aces, but instead of reaching for his gun or any of the weapons Inkyu’s sure he’s armed with, Sehyung just laughs as well.

“Well, what are the odds of that,” he says, more amused than anything. “Looks like you’re more than just a pretty face.”

 

  
3.

 

They start traveling together shortly after that, pulling heists and gambles and anything they can get their hands on—including each other. It’s convenient, efficient and purely physical. Most surprisingly—it actually somehow works, traveling and trusting another conman.

It helps that Sehyung’s got crackshot aim with that huge gun of his and Inkyu’s always got a way out. Any job out there becomes almost too easy with the two of them glued together by honor among thieves, but there’s something else beyond that.

Inkyu doesn’t want to quite call it a partnership because that implies that what this is between them is sustainable, something ongoing and if he’s being frank he’s never met any two people less enthusiastic about commitment than Sehyung and himself.

Sehyung is full of surprises though. Inkyu considers himself an expert at reading people, but Sehyung is full of contradictions when he least expects it.

For one—stealing from Sehyung is surprisingly easy for how material a man Inkyu pinned him as.

It’s small things, really. A coin here, a pen there. Sometimes a shotgun pellet when he feels particularly daring. Inkyu’s the master of making objects disappear and reappear in the middle of his palm. They don’t call him the Prince of Thieves for nothing.

And in the end, it’s less about what he steals than the fact that he’s stealing from his partner in crime that makes the act thrilling.

Whatever he takes, Inkyu more or less puts back before Sehyung ever bothers to notice. Years down the line, it will hit him that maybe it was less about Sehyung not noticing and more about Sehyung not caring. That Sehyung trusted Inkyu to put his things back, to never take the things that really mattered or disappear on him when it counted.

At a pit stop in an inn in Noxus, Inkyu ends up sitting eye-to-eye with Sehyung’s precious shotgun while Sehyung showers in their ensuite. There are plenty of things he could be doing in the meantime—planning their next heist, scouting the area—but he ends up fixating over the gun.

It’s a stupid idea, something he’s never really considered before, but—

He leans over, just to touch the oversized thing. The metal is cool under his touch, the grip too big for his hands, the whole thing unwieldy and large against his chest. Inkyu’s used to dealing cards, lifting jewels, and playing with other pretty trinkets that fit nicely in his hands and pockets. The gun is different to say the least, a heavy weight in his hands like the way Sehyung is on his heart.

He imagines walking out of the room now and wonders if Sehyung will assume the worst; if he’ll realize Inkyu’s walked out and come chasing after his most prized possession.

“Do you even know how to shoot a gun?” He hears from the side, looks over to see Sehyung rubbing at his head with a towel, another tied around his hips. “Try not to bring the roof crashing around our heads.”

“You don’t mind me touching it?” he asks. “What if I shoot you?”

Sehyung narrows his eyes for a moment, pauses in his effort to dry his hair. “Then it’d belong to you,” he finally says, shoulders relaxing as he shrugs. “At least let me get dressed before you murder me?”

“Of course,” Inkyu says. “I’m a gentleman after all.” He lifts the gun, makes a show of lining up the sight so he’s aiming the barrel right at Sehyung. A very naked Sehyung whose towel is slipping down his waist.

Sehyung snorts. “The safety’s on, and you’d fall over if you fired it like that, anyway.” He walks over to Inkyu, stands right behind him and wraps his arms around Inkyu while he fixes Inkyu’s stance and grip. Sehyung is warm and smells like fresh soap, and for a homeless street rat of nearly two decades, Inkyu thinks this might be the closest thing he’s ever had to a home.

He turns to press a kiss against Sehyung’s mouth, catching a lip between his teeth and Sehyung laughs into the kiss.

 

2.

 

They break into the Clockwork Vault in Piltover and fuck on top of the filthy piles of treasure they’ve stolen like Sehyung has always wanted to.

Gold coins dig into his back as Sehyung pushes him onto the floor and kisses him roughly.

Inkyu’s giddy, high off the heist and that’s the only reason he leans in and tells Sehyung a bunch of stupid promises. He’s a sweet talker, it’s what he does. He takes people’s hopes and twists them into something almost believable, only to snatch it all away in the last possible moment.

(Years down the road he’ll tell himself that Sehyung should have known better-- that he should have known better than to ever trust Inkyu. And Inkyu was a fool to ever think he could trust himself to keep Sehyung’s trust, too.)

He says it anyways though, because the future isn’t now and right now Sehyung pushes his breath into Inkyu’s lungs and says it back. “I love you too.”

“You’re a fool,” Inkyu says back without hesitation. “Fortune’s fool without a doubt.”

“I’m not fortune’s fool,” Sehyung grins, teeth sharp against the skin of Inkyu’s neck. “I’m yours if you’re being frank.”

“You’re a fool all the same,” Inkyu says back and that gets a laugh out of Sehyung. His hands trail down to grip Inkyu’s waist and pull him in close. Sehyung holds him roughly, like he’s afraid Inkyu will slip from his fingers if he allows him any slack, like he knows deep down that keeping Inkyu close is as futile as grasping at air.

“You’re a fool too,” Sehyung says fondly.

“Swindler,” Inkyu corrects. “I prefer the sound of that.”

“Of course you do,” Sehyung says. He holds Inkyu close and Inkyu lets himself sag into the hold, limp and boneless as they rest on their pile of stolen treasure like they belong here. Two street rats who clawed through their rags to find their path to riches.

“Don’t make it sound too good,” Sehyung chides and Inkyu shrugs back.

“Wanna make a bet?” Inkyu grins against his lips and Sehyung tilts his chin up for another kiss.

“What kind?”

He takes the bait, he always does because as obsessed as Inkyu is with magic, Sehyung’s just as addicted to gambling. He loves to play the odds and for some reason whether it’s Inkyu on the other side of the table or beside him or beneath him, he’s always willing to play.

“What are your thoughts on magic?"

 

 

1.

 

Sehyung makes his stance on magic very clear and yet—Inkyu steals magic from the very man he should never have crossed paths with at the expense of the only man who has wanted to walk the same path as Inkyu— _with_ Inkyu.

The deal itself wasn’t explicit, but Inkyu isn’t stupid enough to even fool himself into thinking he didn’t know all along what was at stake. Sehyung’s angered a lot of powerful men over the years, Inkyu’s just the same, but the difference is that this time Inkyu’s got his back to the wall, cornered and offered something he could never refuse.

He’s not a hero, not someone gallant enough to hold his head up high and tell the devil to fuck off. It doesn’t matter what his intentions were or are anymore. His best trait is trickery and a close second is running away.

At the end of the day, Sehyung rots in jail and Inkyu disappears like the wind.

(His actions, as it turns out, don’t speak much louder. He tries, so so many times, to break Sehyung free. He gets close about half of those times and the other half, he spends watching his team die horrific, gruesome deaths.

He thinks of Sehyung, alone and rotting in a cell and wonders if he’s figured it out yet. If he’s figured that Inkyu is the one who sold him out and that he’s spent the past five years regretting it but still failing to make amends.)

 

 

+1.

 

Sehyung breaks out some years down the road—of course he does. There's no surprise anywhere on his face to see Inkyu appear in the warehouse to steal an ancient and absurdly priced artifact. In fact there's nothing but cold, deadly rage encompassing his features as he looks up and smiles at Inkyu for the first time in nearly six years, eyes cold and deadly. 

“Sehyung,” he smiles back, but it comes out as more of a gasp than the easy drawl he wants. Even after all this time, it’s no surprise that it would be Sehyung of all people that catch him off guard.  

“You fucking bastard,” is all Sehyung says back and given the circumstances, Inkyu’s just glad he’s being acknowledged at all.

Sehyung's gun is bigger than he remembers, and at this range, one shot is all it would take for him to blow any body part off of Inkyu he’d like.

But he doesn’t fire. Not yet.

“How’d you get out?” Inkyu asks, part out of curiosity, part to buy time to dig a card out of the waistband of his pants. Sehyung's onto him immediately and cocks his gun, leveling it straight with Inkyu's face. 

"Don't you dare," he warns. Inkyu knows he's bluffing, the safety's still on. All the same, he lowers his hand and waits for Sehyung to make the first move. When he doesn't, Inkyu sucks in a breath, ready to toe the boundary between them and find out what exactly is stopping Sehyung from blowing his head off, if nothing else.  

"So how did you get out?" he repeats, because part of him is skeptical that Sehyung somehow made it out on his own with no outside help, when Inkyu—the master of escape plans—spent years failing to crack him out. 

"I swam," Sehyung drawls sarcastically and his eyes harden as he eyes the casual and oh so very fake smile on Inkyu's own face. 

"So what now?" Inkyu breathes. They're at a standstill, neither of them willing to make the first move. He lowers his hands, straightens them by his sides. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Maybe," Sehyung muses, but he doesn't make a move to lower his gun. 

"I told you not to go that day," Inkyu says slowly, too little too late like always. "The risk wasn't worth what we were stealing. You knew that."

"Is that all you have to say?" Sehyung laughs, but it sounds much more like a harsh bark, more bitter than angry. "Was the magic worth it?" 

"Can't say I don't have some regrets," Inkyu mutters. "But what's done is done, if you'll excuse me—"

He draws a card out with a flourish and Sehyung flinches immediately.

"Don't move," he warns and the safety comes off. Inkyu pauses, just enough for the tip of his card to brush the barrel of Sehyung's massive gun. 

"Did you come to stop me?" Inkyu asks. "Why? Haven't I taken enough from you?"

"If that's what you think this is about, you bastard," Sehyung says grimly. "After all this time, you still-"

Knowing Sehyung and his propensity to never stop talking, this is bound to take a while. Inkyu's not in the mood to stall anymore.  He has a job to do, something precious to steal. Sehyung's wasn't supposed to be part of the equation. 

“As much as you love lecturing me—” Inkyu says, sliding cards out from under his sleeve.

“I’d love blowing your head off a tad more,” Sehyung says plainly and his grip on the gun stills. He means it this time and Inkyu smiles in spite of himself. 

"Come and get it then," he taunts, feeling his stomach sink as Sehyung finally smiles back, just as deadly.

  

**Author's Note:**

> there's more to come and we're happy to say that it's 100% less angsty, kind of


End file.
